Living With Music: A Playlist by Kenneth Goldsmith

On Wednesdays, this blog is the delivery vehicle for “Living With Music,” a playlist of songs from a writer or some other kind of book-world personage.

This week: Kenneth Goldsmith, who is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently “Traffic” (Make Now). He is the founding editor of UbuWeb and a DJ on WFMU.
Kenneth Goldsmith’s November 2007 Playlist:

1) Karawane, Marie Osmond. Yes, it’s true. This is Marie Osmond performing Hugo Ball’s 1916 Dada sound poem. It’s taken from a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not segment on sound poetry from the mid-80s. According to producer Jed Rasula: “Marie was required to read Hugo Ball’s sound poem ‘Karawane’ and a few script lines. Much to everybody’s astonishment, when they started filming she abruptly looked away from the cue cards directly into the camera and recited, by memory, ‘Karawane.’ It blew everybody away, and I think they only needed that one take.” Full documentation here.

2) The Man Within, Sean Landers. An 18-minute rant by New York City-based artist Sean Landers on how he is the best artist that has ever lived in the history of the planet Earth, set to the strains of Holst’s “The Planets.” Obsessive, narcissistic, egotistic, breathless, maniacal and seemingly endless, the most amazing thing is that Landers actually believes every word he says. (You may remember Landers in the 1990s when he did that back page comix for Spin Mag). Could be my favorite piece of audio art of all time.

3) Robin Kahn sings “Jesus Christ Superstar” in its entirety: Part 1 | Part 2. The visual artist Robin Kahn put this out as a handmade cassette back in 1991. As a teenager, she was obsessed with “Jesus Christ Superstar” and would sing along with the record for hours in her room after school. As an artwork many years later, she decided to sing the entire thing from memory a capella. The result is astonishing: moving, profound, heartfelt – and nearly unlistenable.

4) I Really Should, Kelly Mark. A recitation of 1,000 things that this Canadian artist really should do: “I really should quit my day job. I really should clean out my wallet. I really should pay back my student loan. I really should watch what I eat. I really should stop smoking. I really should cut down on my caffeine. I really should have asked them to lay me off. I really should have stolen more office supplies…” You really should listen to this.

5) 1-100, Charles Bernstein. Dating from 1969, this is the earliest known recording of this now-famous L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet. It is simply a three-minute recitation of the numbers 1 to 100 in that order. Feel the suspense as the piece slowly builds; if you last that long, things get really spicy around 75…

6) Cake, Todd Colby. A paean to that most humble sweetmeat rendered in the most insane way imaginable. If you like this, check out 160 cover versions of this poem here.

7) Ursonate, Christian Bök. An 18-minute cover version of Kurt Schwitters’s “Ursonate” (1922-1932), often called the greatest sound poem of the 20th century. The Canadian poet Christian Bök puts a rock ‘n’ roll spin on the piece, creating the fastest version ever recorded. Like all of Bök’s audio work, it’s blazing, deadly accurate and simply astonishing. And he always recites it from memory. If you want to sing along, you can find the score here.

8) Run For Your Life: The Complete Beatles in One Hour, Steve McLaughlin. Every Beatles UK-released LP compressed into a one-hour file. Like The Beatles’s trajectory itself, the first few albums don’t sound like much, but once you hit, say, “Revolver,” things get absolutely insane.

9) Chart Sweep: Part 1 | Part 2. Anonymously produced, “Chart Sweep” is a chronological collage featuring a tiny fragment of every #1 U.S. chart hit from 1956 to 1992. It’s about 45 minutes long and spans the age of the 45 RPM single, starting in 1956 when pop charts began with Dean Martin’s “Memories Are Made of This” and ending in 1992 with Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” the last #1 hit that was released as a 45. Lots of mystery surrounding this one: no one knows if it was used for commercial purposes or was done as an art work.

10) Sonne statt Reagan, Joseph Beuys. Recorded in 1982, during the height of the No Nukes movement, the legendary German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys fronts a New Wave pop band belting out a snappy number against nuclear energy and Ronald Reagan. But taken out of the art context, this simply sounds, urm… sweet and really goofy. Even goofier is the video of this here.

11) Poem for Tables, Chairs and Benches, La Monte Young. Dozens of people dragging furniture – tables, chairs and benches – back and forth across a microphoned stage. Before he was an avant-garde classical musician, Young was a jazz saxophonist. Written in 1961, I think it’s Young’s response to Ornette Coleman’s free jazz, which came just a few years earlier. In my humble opinion, Young trumps Coleman in terms of sheer noise, power and the ability to grate the nerves of the poor soul trapped in the cubicle next to you.

Isn’t this going a little bit too far? One reason I read this blog is that it appears to be under the good guidance of the Senior Editor of the New York Times Book Review, a trusted source, one that separates the wheat from the chaff. A list of audio pranks like this contributes absolutely nothing to the discourse of serious literature as put forth by the New York Times. Perhaps, Mr. Garner, you are trying to be “hip” or even “ironic,” but such lower instincts are better left alone by the Times. Quite frankly, I can’t see Mr. Goldsmith or his rakish tastes appearing in print in the NYT Book Review, so why here? It seems better suited for the “Styles” section. Please tell me this is a joke.

But I gotta disagree with the praise of Christian Bok’s speed-recitation of Schwitter’s “Ursonate.” Much as I love Bok’s own poems, his treatment of Ursonate ain’t “deadly accurate,” and far more ugly than it is “astonishing.” It is “blazing” and while Bok I believe intended to speed read the thing it doesn’t work, not to my ears. Find and compare — and listen to instead — the circa 1930 recording of Schwitters himself reciting his “Ursonate.” Schwitters takes it at a much slower pace, and it’s a far richer and hypnotic experience.

I beg to differ–Kenny G. singing theory is pure and simple genius, particularly because it’s off-key. I haven’t heard this particular “song,” but I’ve listened to many, many other of Kenny G.’s renditions. From the selections, it seems much of them are up WFMU’s general alley–which means much of it is blessed absurdity. For classical music, one can listen to many other radio stations. For top 40 or ‘classic’ rock (let alone AM radio pseudo-Christian dreck), one also has many offerings. But for something alive, shimmering, and teeming with the oddness that is life itself, turn to WFMU at //www.wfmu.org — blessed relief from media monopoly monotony!

I am Brian Salchert, and this is my first time here. The #4 comment above is not mine. Besides, even a negative comment from me/ would not be written in that style. Apparently, the joke is on me. I am not the comment #10 Brian either. Actually, I wouldn’t even make a critical comment about Kenny Goldsmith’s playlist. The only item on it I was even aware of is the Marie Osmand sings Hugo Ball.

If approved, the comment beginning “I am Brian Salchert” is mine.
Two things: I think I spelled Osmond as “Osmand”
and it could be there’s another Brian Salchert,
though I’ve never encountered one. Anyway, I am
Brian A J Salchert.